WORKSHOPS

There were at least a thousand workshops in all, presenting a mind-boggling array of topics to choose from. Making up our minds as to where to go each morning was quite a task.

Some of the workshops were organized to form a whole comprehensive series, and of these, the DAWN workshops were especially interesting. DAWN stands for Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, a wide network of women from many different regions, races and political ideologies concerned with searching for more equitable development processes. DAWN's contributions to the NGO Forum included a book, "Development, Crisis and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives" presented at the opening panel on development, and a series of panel discussions and workshops on the following themes:

1. Effects of growth-oriented development on women.
2. The global political, economic and cultural crisis.
3. An alternative vision of development.
4. Women and the media.
5. Development dialogues.

It must be stated that the DAWN panels provided a solid and integrated framework within which to view women's issues; they made it very clear that women's problems were a part of, and resulted from, an inequitable world order characterised by gross inequities of gender, race and class. They expressed the vision of a better world for women and men alike, and conveyed the hope that women's situation as the most oppressed, might give them the leverage to be the ones capable of devising strategies for realizing that vision.

Another workshop series was organized by Women's Studies International, with 4 panels and 13 workshops co-sponsored by 26 organizations and institutions from 15 countries. Some of the workshop themes were: women's studies as a strategy for educational change, participatory research methods, linking research to grassroots action and who sets the agenda?.

The 'Third World Forum on Women, Law and Development' also ran a series of workshops. Inaugurated with a keynote address by Nawal EI Saadawi of Egypt, the Forum focused on the principle of empowering women to make law relevant and real. It was based on actual case studies drawn from experiences in the Third World, structured around four major themes: State, Law and Development; Law, Custom and Ethnicity; Violence and Exploitation; and Strategies for Collective Action. Discussed were land, labour, family, custom, religion, domestic violence, rape and prostitution, with many remarkable presentations by women of the Third World.

The WEMOS/HAI Women's Network on Pharmaceuticals organized a workshop to discuss the exploitation by pharmaceutical industries of women's subordinate position and their centred role in healthcare and reproduction. Women "are taken advantage of for profit, population control or other macro political reasons", according to the group. Among the recommendations discussed at the workshops were:

• Women's rights to free choice of contraceptives and to complete and unbiased information on their risks and side effects.
• Stopping population control programmes which violate women's rights.
• Adoption by the WHO of an international code for marketing practices in the pharmaceutical industry
• Preparation by the WHO of a specific list of essential contraceptives and other fertility related drugs.
• Banning production, export and distribution of contraceptives and fertility related drugs that are proven to be harmful to women's health and well-being, including DES (diethyl stilbestrol) and high dose EP (oestrogen - progesterone) drugs.
• Banning the testing of new-fertility related drugs on women in regions where medical infrastructure is insufficient and legislations are inadequate to protect women from harmful clinical trials.

Unlike at Copenhagen where confusion and rumour surrounded the issue of female circumcision and many African women resented the handling of the issue by their western sisters with a mission to save Africans, the workshops on female circumcision in Nairobi were organized and controlled by African women. It was evident that a lot of efforts were being made by women all over Africa to eradicate the problem, and the workshops were in fact a summing up of the many inter-African meetings that have taken place over the years since Copenhagen. The message from the workshops was "what is needed from our western sisters is not a denigrating, we-know-better approach, but the realization that mutilation of women is the actual order of the day. In the west it manifests itself as economics, psychological and spiritual mutilation; in Africa, it includes the physical. Let us then unite..."

One particularly useful set of workshops was on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Convention was adopted by the UN in 1980 and came into force in 1981 and sets an important standard for sexual equality. The 30 articles set out, in legally binding form, internationally accepted measures and principles to achieve equal rights for women everywhere.

The workshops helped us understand how we can use the Convention. Seventy-six countries have ratified the Convention, and by international law, they are bound to act positively. Even those who have just signed cannot act contrary to it. A committee of 23 members, called the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against women (CEDAW) has been set up to monitor the implementation of the Convention.

The Committee meets every year, either in Vienna or in New York, and functions through dialogue with governments who produce a report on the situation of women in their countries and are questioned by CEDAW on the progress achieved.

Women and women's groups were called upon, during the workshops, to lobby for ratification of the Convention by their countries and to publicise its guarantees. They were invited to attend the Committee's sessions - the next will be in March '86 in New York, and to bring to its attention violations of the Convention.

SPECIAL EVENTS

In addition to the many workshops, there were several special events. There was, for example, a display of Kenyan and African crafts at the City Hall. There was a film festival where films from all corners of the world most of them by women, about women and for women - were screened throughout two weeks, morning, afternoon and evening. Then there was the 'Karibu' (meaning 'welcome' in Swahili) Centre organised by Church women which ran a series of activities including Ecumenical worship, Peace Vigil and Counselling Services.

A catchy poster - 'If it is not appropriate for women, it is not appropriate' greeted visitors to the 'Tech and Tools' complex that organised workshops, demonstrations and small group encounters on appropriate technology, The main emphasis was on examining projects and policy issues, · technologies and training activities based on women's experiences worldwide, in an effort to devise strategies to increase women's access to and control of technologies in agriculture, food-processing, health, energy, communications and so on. Hands-on instructions were also given on building solar dryers, solar refrigerators, simple ovens. etc. which were on display.

The most eye-catching spot at the Forum '85 was probably the Peace Tent which provided an open space for women to meet and discuss their concerns. There were many dialogues between women of countries in conflict. The Palestine - Israel Dialogue was among the events which drew the largest audiences in the Forum. There was also a dialogue between women from the US and the USSR. There were many exhibits and displays, regional panels from Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa
video and film shows and many more.

'Some of the Kenyan rural women who were not able to come to the Nairobi forum had instead, the Forum going to them, when several bus loads of Forum participants visited women's groups' projects in rural areas.

SPONTANEOUS EVENTS

The famous Nairobi University Lawns was the venue of several other meetings and events that emerged during the course of the Forum, as well as displays of nooks and publications, quilts and posters, not to mention all the singing and dancing. Betty Friedan, . US author and feminist, sat under a fig-tree at noon during the forum to
share with women their thoughts on the future directions of feminism. A meeting to show solidarity with the people's struggle in Nicaragua took place. Women formed a peace chain to protest aggression and conflicts in all .parts of the world, and this was followed by talks from different women's groups in the Philippines on the steadily
worsening ·political situation and increasing oppression and violation of human rights. It was heartrending to see the spontaneous support extended to the Filipino women from women in Guatemala, El Salvador Chile, Nicaragua, New Caledonia and the United States. It was an empowering and hope inspiring experience for all of us who were there. In addition, placards and banners from the Greek women of Cyprus, women of the Sahara, Nicaragua and Iraq conveyed political messages and declarations.
Anyone ready to stop and listen could get a brief account of a country or community and the plight of its women. The extent to which our horizons have widened through all these encounters is hard to describe.

DAWN UPDATE

The DAWN initiatives aroused a great deal of interest and enthusiasm. Many women and groups around the world have expressed the need for the DAWN process to continue and their desire to participate in.it. The advisory committee to DAWN is meeting to work out ways in which to keep the process going and make the DAWN
network an ever-widening one.

Devaki Jain from the Institute of Social Studies in New Delhi and one of the women who has given her energies to bring about DAWN, in reflecting on what went on in Nairobi, writes: Most groups, not only from the developing world, but the "advanced" world had come to a similar recognition:

1. That it was the women's movement - the aggregation of the diverse organizations of women that needed to be focused upon as the vehicle for fundamental transformation of society. There was a certain amount of turnabout from the trend to appeal the State.
2. That unity amongst these women's organizations was necessary not only at the local level, but at the global level if the potential of the women's movement was to be translated into an active force.
3. That poor women hold the key both to generate action as well as for analyzing the defects of the past.
4. Another interesting perspective that was given empirical substance was the recognition that the bypassing of the centrality of women's roles, also made goals of progress inefficient.

The task after Nairobi seems to be to maintain the unification process, and the non-governmental connection. In continuing to foster the DAWN process, what has emerged as its two most powerful attributes are the process, and the perspective which looks like holding potential for providing the unifying territory.
Isis International will keep you informed of DAWN'S plans and the addresses where they can be contacted in the future.